


Before M

by Swifty_Fox, weicheidarling



Series: things unsaid [2]
Category: All For The Game - Nora Sakavic
Genre: Andrew Minyard - Freeform, Canonical Child Abuse, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, M/M, Smoking, Soft Neil Josten, as soft as he can be that is, florida tw, this is super self indulgent
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-24
Updated: 2019-06-24
Packaged: 2020-05-18 16:54:06
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,052
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19338655
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Swifty_Fox/pseuds/Swifty_Fox, https://archiveofourown.org/users/weicheidarling/pseuds/weicheidarling
Summary: “Don’t act like you’re upset about this.”“There isn’t a this. This is Nothing.”“Nothing sure involves a lot of kissing.”





	Before M

**Author's Note:**

> Sup, Swifty-fox coming back from the dead with some good Andriel content. heavily and angrily edited by addesin thank u
> 
> [Children's Story by Slick Rick](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HjNTu8jdukA)

Seventeen is not a good age. It’s better than sixteen, and leagues ahead of twelve. But Neil is well and tired of seventeen.

Summertime sits sticky and heavy in the air, clinging to sweat-soaked skin and turning his mop of auburn curls into something resembling a wet poodle. The sweatshirt he’s wearing, shrunk in the wash by Mara in the last load, leaves much of his torso open to the air. Sweat pools in the small of his back and between his abdominal muscles, making him crave a cold shower. But they are allowed only one a day, and Neil would rather save the precious water for the night, when the moon failed to cool the heat, but rather pushed the humidity to suffocating levels.

God, he hated Florida.

The cool wood floor offers some modicum of relief, soothing against his bare and bruise-mottled legs as he rests his arms on the foot of the bed and props his chin on the mattress. His fingers rest mere centimeters from sock-clad feet, and he closes the small distance to brush a knuckle across the soft fabric.

Andrew’s hand, calloused and scabbed, smacks his hand away, hissing at him. Neil looks up quickly to see if he had gone too far, and instead of black distance, he sees only mild irritation.

He grins at the other boy, all sharp lips and white teeth, and shifts against the hard wood of the floor. Andrew’s eyes flick perceptibly to the strip of skin between his hip and basketball shorts and Neil grins wider.

“‘Blow your brains out and snuff your shame out’ makes you sound like some wannabe Tupac. Sorry, but the whole goatee thing is so not you.”

Andrew narrows his eyes at him, his own pale skin glinting with sweat as he sucks furiously on his cigarette, the tip glowing cherry red and the smoke filtering up into a ceiling already stained and cracked from years of smoking.

Neil just stares back, daring Andrew to say something, to react. His jaw throbs slightly from a fist he wasn’t quite able to dodge from Ben, and he pokes the inside of his cheek around the hurt, wincing at the tenderness.

The battered notebook in Andrews hands creaks as his hold tightens on it imperceptibly, and he leans forwards to grip Neils chin, squeezing his jaw until Neil acquiesces and leaves the bruise alone. From this angle, Neil can see the soft pale hairs around Andrews' ankles, the stubble of a hopeful teenage beard on his chin, and the deep bruising around his eye. Also courtesy of Ben.

“Staring,” Andrew grunts at him, and Neil steals his cigarette in response, taking a deep drag. The smoke is painfully hot in the Florida weather, and Neil feels almost sick with it as he exhales slowly, sudden dizziness catching him off guard.

He hands it back to Andrew, their fingers barely brushing, and Neil pillows his cheek against his shoulder. Afternoon sun slants through the window, turning Andrews hair and eyes to molten gold. The daily rainstorm had just passed, the water still in the air refracting the light until it fills the entire room with a soft yellow glow. It’s almost enough to forget the locked fridge, the trash in the front yard, and the shouts and apathy in turns echoing up the stairs.

But here in this room, behind closed doors with the smoke, Slick Rick’s _Children’s Story_ escaping from a broken, beaten iPod and the easy silence between the two boys, it felt something like safety. As much as either of them had experienced.

Neil trails his fingers back over Andrew’s feet again slow, pausing right before they meet skin, looking up with a silent yes or no? Their gazes lock, and Andrew holds his stare, holds Neil’s entire breath with that look before he once again returns to the open notebook in front of him, no.2 pencil scratching comfortingly against the paper in silent permission. Neil hides a quick, pleased grin against the bunched fabric of his sweatshirt and traces his fingers over Andrew’s ankle, scratches his nails through the blonde hair and circles over the roundness of the joint, the bone hard under silky skin.

Neil wasn’t an artist, wasn’t a poet like Andrew, but his life had made him an expert on the delicate beauty of human anatomy. How breakable and strong bones and muscle and flesh were. For all that Andrew seemed like an unbeatable force of nature, Neil knows it wouldn’t take much to destroy the thrum of life under his skin.

His fingers travel up over Andrew’s ankle, over the threadbare fabric of his sweatpants, past the harsh bend of his knee and trail along to the crook of his elbow, damp with sweat where his armbands must be suffocating. Andrew had stopped writing again and gazes at Neil with an intensity that would make others cower away. Instead, Neil looks back and asks aloud this time, voice hoarse from lack of use, “Yes or no?”

Neil waits for the emotionless ‘Yes’ before he peels off the armbands, knees aching where they press into the hardwood floor and sheets clinging uncomfortably to his sweaty stomach. He ignores all that easily in lieu of dipping his head to examine the pale underside of Andrews' forearm.

The skin is damp and swollen with sweat, the weave of the fabric stamped in clear lines into the flesh over angry ropy scars. The oldest faded and white and not nearly as awful as the newer ones, scabbed over and varying from neat little lines to enraged jagged things. Neil knows every one by heart. Some from witnessing and some from tracing them over and over with his eyes and fingers and lips, tentative and breathless as Andrew holds perfectly, painfully still over him.

He does so now, bending further to press his lips to the most recent cut, not a gentle healing kiss, but an open-mouthed, wet caress, tongue tracing the ridged line of the wound, licking away the sweat and a few beads of blood from the irritation of the armbands. Andrew gives a full body shudder in his grip, and Neil moves to another scar, giving it the same treatment, teeth scratching lightly. Andrew shudders again, and Neil pulls away, a thin line of saliva connecting his lips to Andrews' arm. The other boy presses his thumb hard enough to cut Neils teeth on his own lip, breaking the connection and stares at him with furious eyes. “I should kill you and dump your body in the Everglades.”

Neil just grins back and steals Andrew’s cigarette to finish it off, tossing it out the open window after putting it out against the rotting bedframe. “You hate the marsh.”

 

“I hate you.”

“Thanks.” Neil presses forwards, mostly hanging off the bed now, and kisses Andrew slow and syrupy, allows him to make the move to close the last few inches between them and accept the intimacy.

They kiss for several long moments, and Neil debates the merits of allowing Andrew to press him down into the mattress and make him moan before he remembers that Mara and the third foster kid are downstairs, and he cringes. Andrew feels the movement and reacts almost before Neil realizes he had even moved, shoving the thinner boy off him and sliding back up the bed.

Neil stares at him breathless and confused for a moment as Andrew looks at him with violent hatred before Neil raises both his hands in a non-threatening gesture. “Wasn’t you. Wasn’t a no Andrew. Not with you.”

Andrew just sneers at him and climbs off the bed to rifle through a sagging dresser, pulling out a pack of Lucky Strikes and tugging one out with his teeth. The muscles of his shoulders bunch under his shirt, impossibly tense. Neil swallows a moment of frustrated regret before falling back into a sitting position on the floor, legs crossed and hands gripping his ankles. It’s odd, seeing Andrew from this angle, taller than him for once. Neil finds he doesn’t mind, thumbs circling bruised ankles, mouth swollen from kisses and temples beaded with sweat.

He grabs the discarded notebook and thumbs through the pages absently, Andrews handwriting is barely legible chicken scratch between aimless scribbles and quotes from actual songs. Neil stops on a random page, spinning so that his shoulders press against the bed frame and his legs trail across the floor, almost tripping Andrew in the midst of crossing the room to the open window. He glares at Neil murderously before perching on the window sill and lighting his cigarette.

Neil had seen Andrew near stab someone after touching his notebook. The act of allowing him to touch an object so clearly precious to a boy who supposedly cared for nothing was not lost on Neil. It makes something deep in his stomach squirm with warmth, something like hope, something like fear.

His mother had told him with her dying breath to trust no one, get attached to no one. But Andrew was a magnet and Neil couldn’t help a draw that was more than just emotional, but bone deep.

He rolls to his feet and walks over to the windowsill where Andrew is perched, straddling the rim of it, one bare foot resting on the porch roof. The shingles were rotting and covered in moss and lichens, damp from the rain and slightly slimy. It makes Neil shudder with revulsion, but he doesn’t move.

Andrew eyes him, rolling the cigarette between his teeth and spits out, “You’re like a fucking dog, following me from room to room.”

Neil doesn’t argue the fact, just leans forwards, hands braced on the window sill to inhale the acrid smell exhaled from Andrew’s nostrils. He doesn’t disagree because he knows it’s true.

Perhaps it’s how Neil has always been, programmed to follow someone’s lead. Perhaps it was a product of his mother, following her like a leashed pet for the first decade of his life. His mother, who had been watcher, protector, punisher and a constant voice hissing at him to survive. Maybe it had been something he’d lost sight of for a while after her death, unmoored like a boat in a storm. But then he’d been tossed in with Andrew. Andrew, who didn’t suffocate him like his mother with her forcing him to survive. No, Andrew demanded his survival but expected it to come from Neil himself and nobody else. Neil couldn’t have ever fathomed he could want something so bad. Couldn’t let go of this- not yet, even if Andrew acted like he’d throw him aside without a single thought. Neil knew he would follow the other boy to the ends of the earth. To watch him, to protect him. To simply bask in the fact that there was someone in this world who could and would protect him.

“Don’t act like you’re upset about this.”

“There isn’t a _this_. This is _Nothing_.”

“Nothing sure involves a lot of kissing.” Neil’s heart is racing, body thrumming with energy, the excitement of the verbal sparring. He knows he’s smiling, his eyes lit up with the way that Andrew sneers at him in utter disdain.

Cars drive lazily past, as sluggish in the heat as their drivers, exhaust mixing with the smell of rain and sun and the Spanish moss swaying slightly in the breeze. Somewhere, a gator bellows, and Neil muses that summer is coming to an end, as little as that means in a seasonless place like Florida. But time passes, even in a place like this, where neglect was better than pain and getting out felt like a lifetime away.

Except not for Andrew, Andrew who turns eighteen in a mere two months and would leave all of this behind without looking back. Neil knows that as well as he knows his favorite cigarette brands.

“You’re going to leave me here. When you age out.”

it’s not a question, but Andrew answers anyways with a slight shrug of his shoulders. “As I said. This is nothing.”

Neil’s stomach twists with panic, at the thought of being alone here, even for a few months. At the thought of Andrew vanishing into the night without a trace or a forwarding address.

“Take me with you.” His voice is a strangled, panicked thing, body leaning forwards into Andrew’s space like he could fold himself inside his chest cavity and stay there. “Andrew, when you go take me with you.”

“And why would I do that?”

“Because you-you need me,” he pushes past Andrews incredulous eyebrow. “You need someone to handle your shows. Your merch. I could sell it. Help you be something. Andrew, you know you could be something.” His heart is pounding like a drum, the possibilities stretching out in front of him. The image of him and Andrew and the open road, driving from city to city as Andrew performs and Neil watches and kisses him backstage. “We could change the entire game, Andrew. You could.”

“Why the fuck would I care about any of that?” Andrews' voice is hateful, eyes burning and shoulders stiff. He’d told Neil once, one night after walking on him sewing himself up from Ben’s fists, had told him that he wasn’t here to be his savior or his protector. If Neil was going to be stupid and get himself beaten, Andrew would stand aside and let it happen.

And so he had, every time Neil had opened his mouth and faced the consequences, he had stood back and watched with an impassive face and angry eyes. But he’d also patched him up every time afterward, hands steady and cigarette clamped tightly between his lips.

Until.

Until between bandages and antiseptic and stitches, there had been kisses and bruising hands and soft breaths. Until things had changed. And Andrew had told him, as Neil lay on the grimy tile of the bathroom, panting and tasting blood in the back of his throat from his split lip, “Our deal is off.”

Neil hadn’t known what that meant until two days later when he’d talked back to Mara, and Andrew had seamlessly stepped between him and the thrown pan, taking the blow with barely a flinch. It had turned Neil’s stomach, and he’d thrown up in the bathroom later before vowing to himself to never let Andrew step in for him again. When he’d told Andrew, he’d just looked at him like he was a fool. Like the thought of Andrew not being beaten and punished for faults not his own was such a foreign fucking concept.

It made Neil want to let loose his father for a cold, bloodthirsty moment.

 

So Neil knows that Andrew, for all his hate and cold, dead, shark eyes, was not heartless, was not wholly apathetic. Bargains had always been a part of this tentative thing between them, a give and take that kept them both on steady ground. Now Neil had to formulate his best bargain yet. He had to _think_.

Neil shifts his balance, tipping from side to side and leaning precariously over the roof until Andrew’s hand shoots out and yanks him back to the safety of the sill by the neck of his sweatshirt, face twisted in a snarl. He meets his gaze steadily, fingers tapping against the cracked, peeling wood and sucks his bottom lip between his teeth. Everything over the past year between them had been bargains and deals and equal take. They measured their relationship in Yes’s and No’s and Truths for Truths. Contracts and barters and promises kept, transactions of words and lines drawn in the sand. But Andrew had let Neil kiss him, had let him trace the scars on his body with tongue and teeth and reverence. Neil had watched as Andrew had carved himself open, hadn’t touched or protested for all that he wanted to because he knew, knew that Andrew had only been seeking autonomy and to take that away would have been the deepest betrayal of trust.

And Neil knows what he has to say.

“Take me with you because all I have is you. Take me with you because if this is nothing than me coming shouldn't matter. And if it is something then you want me with you. Andrew, take me with you because I don’t want to be Nathanial or Abram or anyone but Neil and Neil is nothing without you.” He’s shaking, trembling and breathing like he’s run miles, knows he looks a little wild as the world around them fades from sunset into dusk.

Andrew’s fingers are still knotted in Neils sweatshirt, almost enough to cut off his breathing before releasing the fabric to hold Neils chin again, turning his face from side to side to examine the angry scars on both cheeks. His cigarette has burnt down to the filter by this point, but he makes no move to snuff it out. They stare at each other like that for minutes that stretch into a half hour, an hour, still as stone while moths and lighting bugs flutter around them, dancing through the swaying moss and gnarled boughs of the trees.

It’s Andrew- always Andrew- because Neil can never turn away, who finally breaks their staring contest, kneecaps clicking as he stands.

Neil watches him, blinking like he’s roused from a deep sleep, swaying a bit as he gets to his own feet.

“Andrew.”

The other boy turns back to him, gaze shadowed by the gloom of the room. Doesn’t say anything, doesn’t voice whatever decision he made in that silent hour.

“I lied. The line is good. Really good.”

A sneer is all he gets in return, but when he closes the door, it’s a quiet gentle thing.

 

 

 

 

_Nice boys don’t get sent where I’ve been_  
_Don’t find hell in the beds I’ve slept in_  
_Have you ever suffocated on another man’s sin?_  
_At the age of ten?_  
_While you watched_  
_From outside your own body_  
_As you’re raped and god, he_  
_Lied to you, told you to beg_  
_Have you ever wanted to fucking put a gun to your own head?_  
_Blow your brains out and snuff your shame out_  
_Cut the taste of “please” from your own mouth_

 

 

__


End file.
